A long and rocky road

MotorStorm had a rocky road to release. There was "target footage" showed off that set the graphics bar impossibly high and had many members of the press skeptical about the power of the PS3. When the game was shown off in a playable form, it was greeted warmly at last year's E3, although it was again the subject of controversy when Sony promised a 1080p resolution running at 60fps. Sony quickly backed off, saying that the game would be released at 720p running at 30fps.

In Japan, the game launched without online multiplayer, leaving only the single-player game to keep people occupied. Sony's strategy should have been to let the game speak for itself; the demo gained favorable reviews among gamers and was usually seen on retail kiosks. This was a sad case of the hype machine breaking under its own weight: "I really think MotorStorm could be the killer app for the Playstation 3," Phil Harrison once said. This is the game that many people had their eye on to prove out the power of the PS3, and no amount of bad press could suppress the fact that every sign pointed to a solid title.

Now that it's on store shelves and we're able to put it through its paces without the hype and endless speculation, we can finally see what MotorStorm is all about. There are some brave choices made with this title—it certainly has a swagger to it. Will it sell more PlayStation 3s? That's a complicated question. MotorStorm seems to succeed almost despite itself: for everything it does well, it almost seems as though there is something else it lacks. Let's strap on the goggles, clean the grit out of our teeth, and give the finger to the big rig bearing down on us. It's time to race in the desert.

It looks pretty now, but wait until you land... ouch!

It's like Excite Truck... with graphics!

I said before that MotorStorm made some brave design decisions, and the biggest one is the final number of tracks: eight. That seems sparse for a racing game, but instead of throwing many different tracks and environments at the player, they stuck with a limited number that all are set in Monument Valley, Arizona. On paper it sounds like they've lost their minds. The saving grace is that the track design is a foot wide and a mile deep. I've raced countless times on these tracks and I'm still finding new shortcuts, new paths, and new nooks and crannies to use to get the drop on the other racers.

This is almost a sandbox game, as the physics and track design work together to allow some truly insane moves and jumps, and there are no limits to what you can do to cut a few seconds off your laps. The game is full of instances where you'll see something and wonder if you can reach it, or jump it, and there is only one way to find out. This sense of exploration and freedom in a racing game is exhilarating.

Even more amazing is that MotorStorm allows you to race seven classes of vehicles: MX Bikes, ATVs, Buggies, Rally Cars, Racing Trucks, Mudpluggers, and Big Rigs. Each class controls and feels different and could have been the focal point of its own game. The Bikes are agile and can get all the air in the world, but the Big Rigs can bully everything else on the road. The AI is mean-spirited, and in tight turns or choke points you'll see a lot of dirty tricks and crashes that you will then have to navigate to move ahead. There is a certain ferocious beauty to the racing, and with everyone out for blood it's hard to tell what's going to happen from one moment to the next: mid-air collisions, explosions, and flying shrapnel are the rule instead of the exception. Combine all this madness with a strong physics engine courtesy of Havok and you'll be swallowing your heart through some very tense races.

If you look up and see the ground, you've done something wrong

The massive amount of routes and shortcuts you'll find in each track along with the vast differences in feel and strategy with each vehicle type make these eight tracks more than enough. Do I wish there were some more? Sure, more variety is never a bad thing. But it's amazing how much replay value there is in what is included.